These are just my opinions. I cannot promise that I will be perfect, but I can promise that I will seek to understand and illuminate whatever moves that the Giants make (my obsession and compulsion). I will share my love of baseball and my passion for the Giants. And I will try to teach, best that I can. Often, I tackle the prevailing mood among Giants fans and see if that is a correct stance, good or bad.

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Friday, October 20, 2006

Magowan: Don't Blow It

Nice article today by Ann Killion about how Magowan should get money from the A's for the territorial rights to the South Bay. I've been writing about this for nearly two years now. Here's my first post about it, when I had my old site (well, first on my blogs, I might have written it for a site that will not be named anymore :^).

I still think that post holds up pretty well still. The Giants could use more money to spend. The A's could pay them big bucks in order to move to the South Bay plus pay the Giants annual money as well, much like the Orioles will get from the Nationals. Win-win.

The Heat is ON

Now there is great imperative for the Giants to do this now, as Ann noted in her article. The A's are planning on moving south soon anyhow. They will be on the border of Santa Clara County with a proposed site in Fremont, on land that Cisco currently have an option on but appear ready to work with the A's for Cisco Park. There is a rumor that Larry Baer and Magowan was spotted in a car near the proposed site, presumably to get a lay of the land.

As a deep South Bayer, I'm still only a 35-45 minute drive away from that area from home, maybe 10-15 minutes from my work (not that I would ever go to an A's game, but some of my co-workers might). That is much closer than AT&T Mays Field is from the South Bay, by a good half hour or so, and that doesn't include the time dealing with parking there, as there are few parking lots around the site. This site in Fremont is easily reachable from most of the South Bay, though most will have to make it an evening there because traffic starts backing up between 3-4 PM, so you would have to leave work a little early.

So they could end up with nothing instead of raking in benefits that Baltimore got, such as, from my post:

Guaranteeing that his franchise will be worth $200M more than he paid for it

Giving him 60% of the revenues of a regional sports network in combo with the Nationals

Guaranteeing that the Orioles' revenue would never fall below the average of what they earned before the Nationals moved to Washington.

And this was for a team that didn't even have a legit claim, they just want to pay the Orioles to go away. Well, the Giants should have been playing that game as well.

What risk is there, if the other team will guarantee that the value of your team will not fall under a value that the Giants agree to? What risk is there if the other team would guarantee your revenues would never fall below the average of what they had before the move? True, the A's might not agree to the exact same terms, but at least the Giants would have gotten something for their troubles. Now, they get zip, zero, nado, a big donut hole!

Magowan: Please Bust A Move, Before It's Too Late

So now that the local media has finally gotten some coverage on this issue, maybe the Giants will finally listen to reason and get some money now before they lose a significant portion of the south bay to the San Jose A's of Fremont. As I noted in my previous post, they can get money now and money in a recurring stream over the life of, say, the rest of their loan payments to make sure that is covered. And if that is not the issue, then I would like to know what the reason is, and it better be good.

This is found money, ready to be used to buy free agents over the next few years or many years, depending on what they can negotiate out of the A's. Now that they are on the South Bay's doorstep with the proposed move to Fremont, the Giants will get much less from the A's, but at least they will get something. Maybe they will at least get enough money so that Brian Sabean will no longer have to make the decision: draft pick or Michael Tucker? He can just get both instead.

The Giants are not cheapskates, they have been spending much of their available revenues on the payroll. During the 1990's, they routinely ran deficits between $0M and $10M, then during the 2000's, they have had small profits, all according to Forbes data. They have been one of the top spending teams in the MLB and their spending has been curtailed by the funding of the Expos and the revenue sharing they have been paying into, where the real cheapskates, like KC and Florida, rake in the extra money then pocket it.

When you run a baseball team and had the third best win/loss percentage in all of baseball from 1997 to 2004, I would call that evidence of intelligence, and if it was inscrutable, then so be it. But I've tried my best to explain the moves of the Giants on this blog and my previous blog and my writings before that as a colunmist on a Yahoo site. If you give me your list of inscrutable moves, I will check to see if I've written on any of them.

To each their own, but I have been very happy with their management: not so happy about the past two seasons, but he's only human (to steal from Human League), he can't be perfect or even good all of the time. I am looking forward to the next era of Sabean's tenure as he transitions from Bonds to the New Giants, hopefully led by Cain, Lincecum, and others. I think it's going to be rocking!

I, Me, Mine

Wow, this was easy and amazingly free. I am a big Giants fan and I hope to use my experience in business (MBA) and analytics (nearly 25 years) to bring up interesting facts to other Giants fans so that we may better understand the team's chances for success (or not) and hopefully share their insights with me. Please read my "OGC's Business Plan" link to better understand what my philosophy is for building a successful MLB team.
I want to teach and share my love of baseball and, in particular, my love for the San Francisco Giants. I will believe to my dying days that Bobby Bonds should be in Baseball’s Hall of Fame for being one of the few to bring the combination of power and speed to the game.
Why a blog? I love technology and society and just wanted to participate in this trend to see what it felt like. Plus I have a lot of questions I would like answered about the Giants and since I don't see anyone else tackling them, I've taken it upon myself to do it. Not that I'm that special, but just that I'm willing to put in the time to investigate them.